Eric Bischoff Claims It’s Too Early To Judge Divisive AEW Segment
Eric Bischoff believes it’s premature to declare Adam Copeland’s first AEW storyline a failure.
Just days after making his AEW in-ring debut, Copeland headed to Collision on October 14th in search of answers from Christian Cage.
Copeland opened the show and was soon joined by Cage, Nick Wayne, and Luchasaurus. Cage told Copeland to leave before Bryan Danielson got involved, and before long Ricky Starks and Big Bill were also in the ring.
Starks and Copeland then traded insults with the WWE Hall of Famer repeatedly interjecting as Starks tried to address Danielson. Copeland said that Starks was a “vanilla midget” version of The Rock — drawing on a criticism some fans have made about Starks being a rip-off of the WWE legend.
The line drew criticism online and it was suggested that Copeland should have been looking to elevate Starks rather than seemingly agree with fans who don’t like him. The idea is that Copeland needed to present Starks as a threat instead of simply putting him down.
Speaking on 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff gave his thoughts on the segment and urged fans to let the storyline play out. Bischoff said it was too early to suggest Copeland had buried Starks, adding that on face value it was a way to fire up the audience — something the show needed.
“Let’s see what happens. Let’s see where it goes. Now if Copeland goes out and destroys Starks during the storyline or in the match, and there’s not an upside for Starks as a character then yes it probably is unproductive. But let’s wait and see, it’s a little early. I don’t mind.
Look, you need heat, you need interest, you need to stir it up. Especially right now in AEW and particularly on Collision. You need to fire the audience up you need to get people who were criticising that promo to get engaged and watch and care and invest. So I’ll postpone any kind of opinion on the quality or or whether it was the right thing or wrong thing to do until we see how the story ends.
Let’s see if Adam ends up in his own way despite what he said and how he’s characterising Starks in a scripted promo, whether it’s physically scripted, or they just agreed to what they were going to do beforehand. Let’s see where it goes. Jumping to the conclusion that Copeland is gonna go out there and you know, in the course of a promo take any kind of shine away from Starks is a little bit premature until we see how the match ends up or how the story plays out.”
Eric Bischoff Praises Logan Paul
During the same episode, Eric Bischoff also took time to heap praise on Logan Paul. The WWE Hall of Famer said Paul’s impact on WWE and professional wrestling has only been positive while outlining his respect for the star and his in-ring performances.
If you use any of the quotes from this article please give a h/t and link back to TJR.